When in Rome

Oriens Journal of the Oriens Foundation October-December 2008 Volume 13, Number 4 $4.00 When in Rome Ever since the Reformation, the Even as a medium for good solid anti- English have prided themselves Catholic propaganda of the type dear This Issue on their incapacity for logical to innumerable English hearts, Basic thought, and on their national proved to be useless. Churchill, for a Page 1 Editorial “genius for muddling through.” It while, fell in love with Basic and tried to is not surprising, then, that they recruit the ferociously Protestant Duke Page 2 are susceptible to fits of linguistic of Devonshire into disseminating it. The Latin Mass calendar totalitarianism by those who do Duke asked a characteristic question: By Oriens staff writers indeed have a conscious (if malign) “What is ‘To hell with the Pope’ in Page 4 agenda, and who are prepared Basic?” Back came the answer from the The strange Roman way Basic glossary: “The Holy Father must By Oriens staff writers go to a hot spot.” The Duke rejected this Page 7 immediately, and no more was heard of Synod tentative on Wrestling the Basic crusade. Biblical inerrancy By Fr Brian W. Harrison Nowadays, luckily, Basic English with our has been forgotten, except for Orwell’s Page 11 Monk and nun round-up ridicule of it in 1984. Sadly, recent By Katrina Edwards Latin spirit news reports of local governments in the UK have demonstrated that the same Page 12 egalitarian itch which gave us Basic, Two Canberra ordinations By Oriens staff writers to enforce it. After a decade of more than half a century back, is still Blairism, it need astonish no-one being scratched. Page 13 that we should witness another Latin ... as I please Bournemouth Council, Dorset, By David Daintree attempt at verbal thought-policing. revealed (BBC News, 3 November Page 14 Precisely because the English 2008) that it has supplied a list of An unlikely trove of language is the richest in the world, it “eighteen Latin phrases which its staff Russian icons offers a temptation to those who, under are advised (in practice, ordered) not By Mark Feeney to use, either verbally [presumably the the promptings of class or religious Page 16 animosity, want to impoverish it. council means “orally”] or in official God’s architect During the 1930s and 1940s the chief correspondence.” And what are these By Roger Sandall linguistic fashion in Britain was for “eighteen Latin phrases” which must no Page 20 longer be permitted to assail ratepayers’ so-called Basic English, devised by a Church music by the professor and ardent pagan, Charles tender susceptibilities? They include unchurched: Fauré Kay Ogden, who believed everything “e.g.”, “ad hoc”, “bona fide”, and “ad By R. J. Stove worth saying could be said with a lib.”: not very obscure terms, we might Page 23 vocabulary of 850 words. As might have supposed. Book reviews be predicted, the Basic English Bible Nonetheless, other councils, such By Lyle Dunne and translation (1941-49) displays a truly as Salisbury’s, have now followed Aniello Iannuzzi priceless gaucherie. Its version of St Bournemouth’s lead, sometimes Page 27 John’s Gospel begins: “From the first concerning other tongues as well as Scientism fiction he was the Word, and the Word was Latin. The councils of Aberdeenshire, By Fred Reed in relation with God and was God.” continued on page 3 October-December 2008 1 Oriens Events Oriens Volume 13, Number 4 October-December 2008 Latin Mass Published by the Oriens Foundation GPO Box 2021, Canberra ACT 2601 www.oriensjournal.com calendar: Editor Gary Scarrabelotti Executive Editor Vatican R. J. Stove Illustrator Denise Sheehan pronounces Contributing Editors Gerard McManus Stephen McInerney Martin Sheehan Oriens staff report on a failed attempt in Britain to impose new calendar principles on the old Oriens is the journal of the Oriens Foundation. The Oriens Foundation promotes appreciation for, and Missal. understanding of, the traditional Latin liturgy as one of the foundations of Western civilisation. Oriens traces in On the whole, the episcopate of England and Wales history and culture, in language, art and aesthetics, in religious and moral norms, the influence of the classical has been singularly slow in implementing the Pope’s call Western liturgy, and examines its interactions with in Summorum Pontificum for wider use of the Traditional private life and public affairs. Latin Mass according to the 1962 Missal. Thus it is hardly I wish to subscribe to Oriens for: surprising that the episcopate has also sought to complicate 1 year $30 the issue of Holydays of Obligation. 2 years $55 The particular question at stake is as follows. Should the Masses 3 years $80 for these Holydays be tied in, as they have been by the episcopate, and I would like to make a donation of $______ with the Novus Ordo calendar’s practice of transferring them to ($20.00 minimum) the following Sunday (Sundays being, naturally, days of obligation for Catholics anyhow)? Please send your cheque and this form to: Oriens Foundation Earlier in 2008, the bishops wrote to Rome’s Ecclesia Dei GPO Box 2021 commission, in what is technically called a dubium, seeking Canberra ACT 2601 clarification on the matter. For some reason, they never released AUSTRALIA the commission’s reply. Name Transferring of feasts Address What they did release was a pronouncement insisting that Epiphany, the Ascension, and Corpus Christi must be transferred Telephone to Sundays. The pronouncement was reported in London’s Catholic Herald on 2 May. Email continued on page 10 2 October-December 2008 Oriens Editorial continued from page 1 and Blackburn with Darwen (this last prohibited “man-made” (its employees Whatever changes in public, in Lancashire), have now forbidden must say “synthetic”), “one-man economic, and domestic life these ill- (Daily Telegraph, 2 November) the show” (its employees must say “one- omened events foreshadow, we can phrase “in lieu”, simply because its person show”), and “forefathers” (its be confident that every contraction or origin is – quelle horreur! – French. employees must say “ancestors”). bizarre expansion of human freedom required to build the world glimpsed in Such political correctness has not Catholics have been dismally vision by our leaders will be furnished gone without opposition. Cambridge familiar over the last forty years with with its own supporting instruments of classics professor Mary Beard has told the consequences of such meddling. linguistic and symbolic manipulation. the Telegraph: “This is absolute bonkers Quite apart from the expulsion of So it was during the Communist and the linguistic equivalent of ethnic Latin from Catholic worship, we revolutions of the twentieth century, cleansing. English is and always has and so it has been during the cultural been a language full of foreign words.” revolution which, beginning in the Another British classics academic, Slovenly 1960s, has swept unabated through Peter Jones, is quoted in The Daily the Western world of whose internal Mail (3 November) as saying: thinking crisis that of the Catholic Church “This sort of thing sends out forms an inseparable part. the message that language is and slovenly To heal the revolutionary damage about nothing more than the inflicted upon Western civilisation communication of very basic calls for the countervailing influence information in the manner of language of truth, clarity, and resonance in a railway timetable. But it is language and symbol. This, in about much more than that. have had to endure since the 1960s turn, requires the recovery of truth, The great strength of English liturgies thick with mistranslations of clarity, and resonance in the central is that it has a massive infusion the original texts; to suffer sermons religious acts of Western civilisation of Latin. We have a very rich which assume that congregations are – in particular, in the rites of worship lexicon with almost two sets densely populated with simpletons; whence Western civilisation drew its of words for everything. To and to endure a decline of the official inspiration and in the context of which try and wipe out the richness Catholic press from a vehicle of serious its character was formed. does a great disservice to the discussion to little more than a clearing- language. It demeans it. I am house for official media releases heavily It is a statement of the obvious all for immigrants raising their laden with lifeless “new church” jargon. (which adds little to our understanding) sights not lowering them.” We did not need Orwell’s warnings – to say that various have been the influences that have worked upon In this edition of Oriens we launch valuable though they are – to teach us the making our culture. What is less a regular feature on the Latin language the interconnection between slovenly obvious today – though it can still by the Tasmanian classicist, Dr David thinking and slovenly language. Most surprise us with its palpable presence Daintree. But a discussion of Latin parish churches demonstrate this – is the Latin character of Western should not be confined to the scholarly interconnection every Sunday. civilisation. To belong to Western sphere. There are broader cultural, even But why should we bother with culture is to belong to a Roman world. political, implications. This hostility linguistic corruption at a time like In order to know how to live in such toward Latin, and its influence upon the present? Surely there are matters a world, one might take the advice of the English language, exhibited by of greater moment calling for our that consummate Roman – though he Britain’s nanny-statists represents a attention? What about the Wall Street was Milanese – St Ambrose: “Si fueris concentrated form of that abhorrence crashes and international financial Romae, Romano vivito more.” “When for any language or speech that evokes meltdown; or the election to the White in Rome, do as the Romans do.” modes of thought considered fit for House of a candidate, unprecedented banishment from “modern society” in American history, with a consistent Here is a piece of wisdom.

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